In a mighty “Up yours” to interfering busybodies everywhere, Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge have announced they are expecting a third child.

Yes, believe it or not, despite having fairly recently received an open letter from the San Francisco-based organisation “Having Kids”, urging them not to have a third child, on the grounds that they should be setting an example of a “sustainable small family”, it seems William and Kate have decided to make their own minds up about how many children they can afford to have, and have decided that on balance, yes, they think they can just about manage one more.

How selfish! How short-sighted! What an abuse of their position of influence – to throw away a perfect chance to set an example to the rest of the world, and do their bit to halt population growth and the dreadful damage it is doing to the world via depletion of resources, climate change and extreme poverty.

After all, look at how everybody already follows the Duchess of Cambridge’s example in everything she does. Note how much more stylish the women of Great Britain have become since she started to grace the pages of our newspapers and magazines, with her perfect poise and elegance. Note, too, how teenage girls no longer stuff their faces with pies, sweets and fizzy drinks, so desperate are they to emulate Kate’s svelte physique.

Of course it is to be expected that couples everywhere, contemplating a third child, would first ask each other “What would William and Kate do?” One can only imagine the frenzied copulation that will be taking place across the nation this evening, as tens of thousands of couples, having previously decided not to have a third child because William and Kate only had two, now desperately race to catch up.

As we all speculate as to whether the new arrival will be a boy or a girl, we can expect the Duke and Duchess to be inundated with requests to “set an example” by refusing to assign a gender to their child, to clothe it only in gender-neutral items from John Lewis to allow the child to make up its own mind as to whether it identifies as a boy, a girl, or the oh-so-trendy “genderfluid”. There are, in fact, already indications that Wills and Kate may be anticipating this demand, with the suggestion that they plan to take a leaf out of David and Victoria Beckham’s book in naming their child “Palace”, presumably after its place of conception.